E67: Revisiting Rogan, Canadian truckers' protest, fusion breakthrough, $MSFT's savvy move & more

Jason Calacanis 0:00 We had a, uh, nice dinner. Chamath hosted a little, uh... Uh, we played a little bit of the cards, and there's this new kid there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:05 Oh, big shout out to (beep) co-founder of (beep) .

Jason Calacanis 0:08 Is there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:09 Great guy.

Jason Calacanis 0:09 I'm like, " (beep) , how do you wind up here at the game, uh, sitting here, you know, uh, having a beautiful dinner with us?" And he's like, "Well..." And then Chamath goes... and he points to (laughs) Helmuth. Helmuth-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:23 Helmuth.

Jason Calacanis 0:23 ... found a billionaire. When Helmuth finds a billionaire, what happens?

David Sacks 0:26 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:26 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:27 He's tied to the hip. He has like a billionaire bromance that he's lost.

David Sacks 0:30 He's a bi- he's a billionaire wrangler.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:32 Helmuth is like one of those truffle dogs in like, you know-

David Sacks 0:35 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:35 Very much so.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:35 ... Alba in Italy. You know, you send him out into the woods, he forages around, he finds-

Jason Calacanis 0:40 Finds a billionaire.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:40 He finds a truffle, just digs it out.

David Sacks 0:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:43 And that's it. It's like he... And then he follows. Like a dog, he follows the billionaire around.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:48 And then he sits there, tail wagging, tail wagging. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 0:50 Tail wagging.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:50 Waiting for his owner to show up and pick this little billionaire off the ground. "Hey, here's another one."

Jason Calacanis 0:54 "Look, daddy, see?" (laughs)

David Sacks 0:56 Oh, God.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:56 Unbelievable.

Jason Calacanis 0:56 "I found another billionaire."

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:58 Helmuth, Helmuth is the most insecure person, but he's such a beautiful human being. I mean, it's just-

Jason Calacanis 1:03 He's a great human.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04 It's like, it's like the tale of two people. He's... He really is a walking case of schizophrenia and narcissism, just...

David Sacks 1:10 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:10 I mean, and that's Chamath saying that. (laughs)

Narrator 1:13 What your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said. We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 1:26 Love USI.

David Sacks 1:27 Queen of quinoa.

Narrator 1:28 I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 1:30 Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All In podcast. With us again, the new chairman and majority shareholder of Laura Piana, Chamath Palihapitiya, and the viceroy of veganism.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:44 Do you like my thin cashmere gilet that I'm wearing?

Jason Calacanis 1:47 Gilet? (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:49 Gilet.

Jason Calacanis 1:49 Do, do you mean polo?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:51 No, gilet.

Jason Calacanis 1:52 Oh, gilet. Okay. Magnifique. Uh, also with us, the viceroy of veganism, the sultan of science, David Friedberg, and the regent of the right wing-

David Sacks 2:04 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:04 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:07 ... David Sachs.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:09 The viceroy of vegans. Wow.

Jason Calacanis 2:12 Viceroy of vegans. It came to me in the shower today. I was like, "You know what? He needs a new one."

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:16 I switched my background, guys. Do you like it? I just flipped the camera to look the other way, just to mix it up a little bit.

David Sacks 2:20 Now we can see your chef picking the vegetables in your garden.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:23 Oh, yeah. Well, before you used to see him pick the herbs.

David Sacks 2:26 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 2:26 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:26 Because the herbs are on this side.

David Sacks 2:27 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:27 But now he's... Yeah, you can see him pick the veggies on this side.

Jason Calacanis 2:30 Oh, yeah. Oh, there's the sous chef. Okay, there's the prep chef.

David Sacks 2:33 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:34 And there's the head chef. Okay, yes, everybody showed up today. Okay, great.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:37 (laughs)

David Sacks 2:38 You know, you seem to enjoy the food, Jason. Every time you come- Yeah, don't complain.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:41 ... you talk all this shit, but you are always eating when you're at my house. You're always eating.

Jason Calacanis 2:45 Who's the first, who's the first to RSVP after Phil Helmuth?

David Sacks 2:48 I'll have- He's not just eating, he's sending his notes to the kitchen. "Could you just do this a little differently?"

Jason Calacanis 2:52 (laughs) I do give notes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:53 Unbelievable. I do, I do.

David Sacks 2:54 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:54 Usually positive ones.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:55 It's unbelievable.

Jason Calacanis 2:55 Like three out of four are positive notes.

David Sacks 2:57 You know when I flew with Chamath a few weeks ago, the, uh, chef made gluten-free Nutella crepes with homemade Nutella. I mean, it was like the most extraordinary breakfast experience.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:07 That Nutella has no sugar.

David Sacks 3:09 It was incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:10 It's basically all protein, fat, and it's sweetened with monk flower sugar. So delicious, that Nutella.

Jason Calacanis 3:17 They, they also kill some albino seals.

David Sacks 3:20 (laughs)

3:20 I've not brought a chef on a, on the plane with me, but I think in fairness, your kitchen's bigger than-

Jason Calacanis 3:24 Well, your plane's not that big. Yeah, I mean, you've got a small plane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:26 Mine has a kitchen. (laughs)

David Sacks 3:28 Yeah.

3:28 (laughs)

3:29 You gotta have a galley.

Jason Calacanis 3:30 I mean, I don't know if a Cessna 142 can fit a chef.

David Sacks 3:33 I'm feeling plane shamed.

3:35 Cessna 142. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:35 You are plane shamed.

Jason Calacanis 3:37 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:38 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:38 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:38 I just, uh, got to, uh, Business Select on Southwest, so I'm really feeling pretty good about myself right now. All right, everybody, let's get started. Uh, a lot of topics people wanna talk about. Do you wanna start with Rogan or the Canadian truckers?

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:53 I think Rogan probably leads into the truckers, no?

Jason Calacanis 3:55 It might in fact lead into the truckers. Okay,

Jason Calacanis 3:58 so, uh, we covered Rogan on Spotify in episode 66 a whole bunch. Since that time, uh, a video surfaced on Saturday, uh, with Joe Rogan repeatedly saying, uh, a dir- well, the N-word and, uh, it's, um, pretty rough to watch, and he, uh, did a mea culpa, an apology. And overall now Spotify has taken down 70 episodes of his podcast. You know, that's out of over 1,000.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:27 I thought it was like 113. That's the, that's the... That's what I saw on Twitter. There's 113 to- maybe 70 had the N-word, but 113 total.

Jason Calacanis 4:35 Oh, okay, yes, you're correct. I, I stand corrected. 110 have been taken down.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:39 I was texting with Sachs, it's like, it's like almost 6% of all of his episodes they took down.

Jason Calacanis 4:44 Yeah, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:45 Something like that.

David Sacks 4:45 Yeah, but not all, not all of them were because of that language.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:47 No, that's what I'm saying, but 6% were taken down.

Jason Calacanis 4:50 6% taken down. In his apology, he said, uh, obviously he was wrong, uh, to use that word for the decade or so, but he pointed out that he did not use it towards a person as a slur, but was talking about it more, uh, in studying or discussing the N-word.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:06 Use versus mention, is that right? Is that the distinction?

David Sacks 5:08 Yeah, or use versus quoting.

Jason Calacanis 5:10 Yeah, so he said it was taken out of context, apologized. Um, he also made a, uh, joke that he immediately said, "Oh my God, that's pretty racist. I shouldn't have told that joke," where he, uh, compared, uh, going to see Planet of the Apes in an all-Black theater in Philly, saying he was in Africa. On Sunday, Daniel Ek sent a memo to Spotify employees claiming he is not the publisher of the Joe Rogan show, something I completely dispute. We'll talk about that in a moment. Thoughts on the latest brouhaha, and do we think that Spotify will be able to handle, uh, this? What seeming... It seems to have died down over the last couple of days, uh, and Rogan is now joking about it in his comedy. Uh, h- uh, you know, engagements at small comedy clubs. What do you think, Sachs?Is Joe Rogan gonna weather the storm? Is Spotify gonna stick with him?

David Sacks 6:05 Well, okay, so as of the last episode of the all-in pod, uh, they were trying to cancel Rogan for misinformation. And for the reasons we discussed, that basically failed because, you know, so many of the times something starts as misinformation, it eventually becomes the truth. Rogan seemed like a guy who actually just wants to present both sides, pre- present a balanced viewpoint. In any event, that whole attempt to cancel him based on misinformation was fizzling out. And then lo and behold, this 22-second clip comes out, and they escalate the charges to racism. If you kinda look at, um, you know, who's behind this clip, it's pretty clear that it was a Democratic Super PAC put this together and sort of AstroTurfed it as a viral video. This is part of an organized attempt to cancel Rogan. Now, as to the merits of the, the sort of racism accusation against him, I mean, look, let me say that I don't think anybody, especially a public figure, should be using this kinda language, um, you know, in this day and age. Even if you're just sort of quoting something or, or mentioning it, you know, he, he shoulda, he should, he should've known better. Um, however, there are also similar clips that are now circulating of Joe Biden doing the same thing, using this type of, like, incredibly incendiary language in like a brazen, almost offhanded way. You've got clips of Howard Stern-

Jason Calacanis 7:33 Hold on a second. Wait, wait. You're saying brazen, and he, he said it exactly the same way as Joe Biden did, which is-

David Sacks 7:37 I would say maybe in a cavalier way. He's, he's. But let me, let me come back.

Jason Calacanis 7:41 Yeah.

David Sacks 7:41 So you have, you have Biden doing it. You've got Howard Stern doing it. Um, so what is the difference? I mean, the, the, the reality here is that, uh, we used to, in our culture, have a distinction between the use of this type of language as an epithet, which was never okay. Uh, or using it, um, uh, you were referencing it. You might've been quoting it. You might've been quoting a, a rap song. You might've been quoting a Dave Chappelle routine. You might be reading from a book. The, you know, might've been telling a story in which somebody else has said it, and you're merely trying to relay what happened. The rules today are that's not an excuse. You can't say it.

Jason Calacanis 8:21 Yeah.

David Sacks 8:21 But the truth is that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, the rules were a little different. That's why Biden said it. That's why Howard Stern has these episodes, and I think it's why Rogan had said it. And I think it's a little bit disingenuous, uh, for people to now try and apply the new rules to this old language. And they're doing it very selectively, because they're not trying to cancel these other people who've said these things under the old rules. They're trying to cancel Rogan. So I think what you're seeing here is selective cancellation outrage, selective application of these new language rules for the purpose of getting Rogan canceled. Why? For the same reasons we were talking about two weeks ago, or last week, which is he's an outsider, he's an independent voice, he bucks the establishment, he doesn't present the orthodox view on COVID, and that's frankly why they want to cancel him.

Jason Calacanis 9:14 Friedberg.

David Friedberg 9:15 I'm just looking at the Howard Stern qu- quote. So in 1993, Howard Stern, um, dressed in blackface and used the N-word in a skit he did, uh, mimicking Ted Danson, talking about Whoopi Goldberg, som- something. And he said, "I'll be the first to admit I won't go back and watch those old shows. It's like, 'Who is that guy?' But that was my shtick. It's what I did, and I own it. I don't think I got embraced by Nazi groups and hate groups. They seemed to think I was against them too." So, uh, I think, you know, Sacks is probably right. I mean, Howard Stern's a very different character today. You know, I think the question of if Howard Stern acted that way today, would cancel culture kind of mob him, the answer is probably yes. Um, but I think it's because, uh, you know, Rogan is out here probably picking a bone with everyone. You know, he's kind of... There, there's, there's no alignment. There's no... There's no tribal, uh, behavior with Rogan, right? He doesn't... He, he's been pretty public about being very liberal. He's been very public about being conservative in some ways. And I don't think he kind of aligns himself strongly with anyone, and so he's a threat to everyone. He's got a huge following, and, you know, he speaks openly and honestly in a way that, uh, that is threatening. Uh, certainly his behavior was inexcusable and has been inexcusable, but there are others, right? And so, it's, it's a, it's an important question, which is, why him? Why now?

Jason Calacanis 10:36 It's also interesting about Ted Danson, he was dating Whoopi Goldberg at the time-

David Friedberg 10:40 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 10:41 ... I believe.

David Friedberg 10:41 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 10:42 And Ted Danson ha- uh, was... There was a roast of Whoopi Goldberg at the Friars Club, and Ted Danson dressed in blackface, I think, whi- which Whoopi Goldberg was in on.

David Friedberg 10:52 Oh, Ted Danson dressed in... Didn't Howard dress...

Jason Calacanis 10:54 And then Howard did a send-up of that.

David Friedberg 10:57 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 10:57 Anyway, the, the point is the moral... The, the, the standard has changed significantly. Let's let Ch- Chamath chime in.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:03 My book of the year last year was this book Wanting by this, uh, author Luke Burgis. Um, he wrote something on Substack. Um, I'll, I'll send you guys a link. You can put it in here. But he said, he said the following. He said, "As we regress to a superstitious quasi-pagan world of witch-burning, civil discourse will be replaced with superstition and scapegoating." Um, and he was talking about Rogan. I think that the, the thing that I was the most proud of in this whole thing, uh, was Danielec. I mean, disclosure, he's a friend of mine, so maybe this is biased. However, I think that Spotify had business principles. Um, and this was similar to what Brian Armstrong did at Coinbase. I think they stuck to those principles. They made a, a well-reasoned decision that they explained to their, uh, employees and shareholders. And then they did the most important thing that Sacks has always been saying around free speech.... which was, which is, more speech. And so what Spotify said when they explained the decision to not deplatform Joe Rogan, was that they would take the exact equivalent economic value of what they were paying them, him, $100 million, and invest it in underrepresented, historically underrepresented groups to tell their stories, to tell, you know, to make their music, et cetera, and so effectively doubling, you know, the universe of that kind of content. And so, I think if the, if people are really willing to listen, I think what we should take away from this is, here's a really clear-eyed example of the solution to free speech, which is just to get more of it on your platform, to have the right disclosures and disclaimers, and then for, you know, people to go a- along with their lives so that they can then choose. And I think that that's, um... That was the, that was the one positive outcome that, that I saw from this entire episode. The rest of it was, uh, another attempt at, you know, uh, being morally absolutist and, you know, scapegoating and then the, uh, that was before, obviously, the, the N-word thing. And then the N-word thing just brought to light that we live in a very different age where the rules have changed, and I think the open question is, um, you know, if you're going to judge people for past behaviors on current rules, are we allowed to do it selectively or does it apply to everybody? And I, and I think that, you know, this is why I think, you know, we saw people like David Simon, you know, came out and David Simon was very, um, you know, basically excoriated Joe Rogan, but then David Simon wrote The Wire, you know? And if you, if you watched The Wire, which is a- a- a- you know, an incredible piece of television that people point to all the time as one of, probably the greatest shows on television, you know, every probably, you know, 13th or 14th word was the N-word.

Jason Calacanis 14:09 Yeah. I have, like, two observations here. Th- and then I'll get to you, Saxon, if you have something you want to chime in on. I, I always like to think about intent, and then I like to look at the apology and think, is this, like, sincere or not? And when you look at the intent, does anybody actually think Joe Rogan is a racist? And I, I think it's pretty clear he's not from all of the behavior collectively in his life, and then you look at the apology. I th- I felt it was incredibly sincere, uh, and there were many learning moments in it, and he's a comedian, which is kind of this other space where we, we ask comedians to make us laugh and make us feel uncomfortable, and now we're also asking them to live by a standard that changes every year and, and words come on and off the, uh, allowable list. Would anybody here... Does anybody here actually think, or anybody listening to me think Joe Rogan's actually a racist? I think the answer is I don't think anybody thinks that. And then number two, I, I felt the apology was incredibly thoughtful, um, and well done. Sacks, what are your thoughts?

David Sacks 15:13 Yeah, I mean, I agree, I agree with those things. Um, nobody was accusing Joe Rogan of racism until the cancellation mob started throwing stones, and the misinformation stones didn't work, so then they escalated to racism.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:26 I think the generalized thing i- just take, take the context out of Rogan for a second. I think that the, the formula, if I can point to this, of cancel culture is now, I think, pretty well understood, which is, um, if you don't like somebody, you need to throw some -ism label on them until that -ism label sticks, and eventually you will find a -ism label. But the, the thing that this cancel culture doesn't appreciate is, everybody has some -ism that, that can be attached to them.

Jason Calacanis 16:00 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:01 Now, some -isms are worse than others, obviously, but, you know, we're all infallible, right? I, I go back to, like, if you wanna quote the Bible, right? There's a, there's a beautiful passage into the Bible, um, the Book of John, and the whole thing, and you guys have heard this quote many times before, but let me just give you the setup. So in the law of the land back then, adultery was illegal, but only for the woman, right? And so there's a very famous example of a woman who was accused of adultery, and, uh, you know, she was about to be, uh, stoned to death, which was essentially the punishment. And Jesus basically draws a line and says, you know, "He who is without sin should cast that first stone." And, uh, nobody does. It deescalates that conflict and everybody leaves, right? Um, and there's a very famous essay, uh, that Rene Girard wrote that basically compared that to a, to a different example in a more paganist context where people did stone people. The idea of all of this is that there's some amount of, you know, sin that everybody carries, and I think that at some point, cancel culture will realize that you have to deescalate and you have to see through some of this noise. You have to have some point of moral resolution to really move on, because this sort of, like, fatalistic judgment doesn't work anymore. So whoever people wanted to cancel Rogan, they must be very frustrated today because for all intents and purposes, he got off the hook. They may try again in the future with some other -ism. He may just as well get off the hook in the future.

David Sacks 17:39 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:39 So what, what is the real solution? The real solution is to figure out how to deescalate and actually have a conversation about the things that he's doing that really upset you, and that is still not what's happening.

Jason Calacanis 17:50 And a path perhaps to resolution. Let's get Freeburg in and then you, Sacks. Freeburg?

David Friedberg 17:54 Uh, I'll say two things. One, I, I think, um... I once sat next to Tony Blair for dinner. You know, he was the Prime Minister of the UK, and he told me... It was a really funny conversation 'cause he was talking about his youth, and he's like, "If there were iPhones when I was young, I would not have ever been elected to public office."... like, you know, um, he was in a rock band. He... I don't know if you guys know his history, but, you know, he was a pretty freewheeling kind of guy. And his point was really broader than that. It was that, you know, all of us have something that people can look to us for and use against us in some way. But I think what's really important with this Joe Rogan thing, and I think the bigger picture for me, dissenting voices and critical voices and outspoken voices are extremely important in the discourse that makes society progress. It is not a good society when people that have dissenting, uh, voices or offensive voices are shut down. Society has a better opportunity to, to, um, chart a new course and to identify new paths, sometimes when the dissenting voice is wrong and sometimes when it is right. But in both cases, it is important to have that dissenting voice because it allows us to have the dialogue that allows us collectively to figure out what is wrong and what is right. And so this notion of cancel culture and the way that people like Joe Rogan are and have been attacked for things that they have said in the past or do say today, um, I think i- is really contrary to the opportunity that the United States presents with this, you know, im- uh, founding principle of freedom of speech.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:20 Saks.

David Sacks 19:21 Yeah, so I, I agree with that. Uh, but I, I want to build on what Chamath said with, uh, the Rene Girard, um, analysis of this. I mean, what we're seeing here is the modern day equivalent of a primitive, you know, archaic stoning ritual. This is a modern day virtual stoning in which we're not, uh, killing somebody, but we're trying to kill their digital avatar. I mean, we're basically trying to remove and destroy their online presence. I mean, that was really th- the goal here. And, um, and, and, and the mechanics of this thing, it, it only works to the extent that people are unaware of the, um, the, the mechanism of the scapegoating. As soon as they become aware that this person's being targeted selectively as a scapegoat, it stops working. And that was the situation we were in last week, where you had, you know, Neil Young threw the fir- he cast the first stone, despite being guilty of misinformation many times himself. He's got, like, a weird history of saying weird things about GMOs and gay people, and some of the stuff got dredged back up. And, and I think that was fair because let he who is without misinformation cast the first stone. And then he got some of his friends, you know, the, these aging, you know, rockers like Joni Mitchell and, uh, Crosby, Stills & Nash to, to, to throw the next stones. And then the media got in on this, and thr- CNN and MSNBC, they were throwing stones. And it was all motivated by the fact that Rogan is simply... does not refuse... he refuses to parrot their orthodoxy because, you know, we can see. People like Howard Stern, who I like Stern, okay? But today, Howard Stern's become a full-fledged COVID hysteric. I mean, he is fully on board with the COVID restrictions and mandates and hysteria. That's why he gets diplomatic immunity to this. So this whole... the, the whole scapegoating ritual around Rogan was about to fail last week, and that's why they escalated it, is because they saw, first of all, Rogan was getting away, and then second, our ability to, to run these sorts of, like, witch hunts, if people start to reject that, we lose all of our power. And so that's why this thing escalated into the most sensitive area that we have in our society, this language around race, this very hurtful... these hurtful epithets. And these people are playing games with that, with, with that type of language, and, um, it's very destructive. And, um... but I think people are seeing through it, you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:49 I really agree with this. I think, like, the, the scapegoating, um, as a way to resolve things, um, is losing its, uh, effectiveness increasingly. It did work online for some amount of time early on. And David, you're exactly right. It's when the mechanism of action was poorly understood. But now that everybody sees it and people try to do it all the time, it just stops working- Yeah. ... and it's not nearly as effective anymore. It's a burnt-out tactic, you know? We see this in- It's a burnt-out tactic. ... startups, and it's like, this marketing channel's been over-burnt, and everybody knows. Like, "Okay, I'm being marketed to." Uh, and to give it some context for those people who are wondering, w- you heard Rene Girard, like, three or four times here. He's a philosopher, and, uh, he taught at Stanford. He had a big impact on Peter Thiel. I don't know if Saks actually took any courses with him. And there's a book- Me, Peter, David. I mean, like, if you're g- e- Did you take courses with him, Saks? I'm curious.

David Sacks 22:42 I never, I never took any courses, but, uh, Peter told me about his ideas in college and I read some of his books.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:47 Yeah. His books are incredible. I mean, he, this is- Rene Girard. Yeah. He is one of the most, uh, powerful thinkers, uh, of, of the sh- I mean, he's, he passed away, unfortunately, but- Reminds me of Joseph Campbell- ... of course, I mean, it's- ... The Power of Myth. Like, they were really thinking about the, the, the sort of basi- basic tenets of, like, human, the human condition and how people behave. It's really worth, uh, double-clicking on. Uh, I think, also interesting, uh, in terms of forgiveness and blackface, uh, Justin Trudeau has appeared no less than three times in his youth in blackface, and it's, it's not a joke. It's literally true. Justin Trudeau- Yeah. ... like, the reason why, um, the, the racism label was planted on Rogan is because he's heterodox. The reason why that racism label has not yet really been planted on Justin Trudeau is because he's orthodox. He's quite, he's quite part of the ingrained establishment. He comes from royalty. In Canada growing up, Pierre Trudeau... You know, m- we were, we were liberals growing up. We were members of the Liberal Party. We'd made donations to the Liberal Party. You know, in our lore, there is no greater symbol than Pierre Trudeau, his father. And so when you're the son of somebody like that, you get an enormous amount of, um, credit in your bank account that you're born with. And he was able to burn through so much of it by doing things that anybody else, in any other situation, may have been judged much more harshly for, and he wasn't.... um, and he becomes prime minister. And then he's able to get reelected. But, you know, his day of reckon- reckoning is coming, um, because he is revealing himself to be a part of this establishment with these views that are actually really uncomfortable and, you know, quite grotesque because of how judgmental they are of everybody else.

Jason Calacanis 24:33 And that's a, a great segue way. And then just finally, Sax, e- correct me if I'm wrong here, Joe Rogan has voted Democrat his whole life, he holds largely Democratic beliefs, uh, he's for universal healthcare, he's pro-trans, he's pro-gay, uh-

David Sacks 24:48 He supported Bernie Sanders.

Jason Calacanis 24:49 ... pro-employee, and he was, uh, voting for Bernie Sanders.

David Sacks 24:53 He's a really stupid person for the Democrats, for Democratic politicians like Biden to alienate because he's a hero to young people, he's a hero to the working class, and his views are fundamentally, I'd say more progressive.

Jason Calacanis 25:07 Yeah. They're 100% progressive, yes.

David Sacks 25:09 Yes. So it's stupid for them to do this, but it's also stupid for them to be alienating these truckers, because Democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class. So let's pivot to that issue.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:17 Can I just say one last thing? I just want to reiterate this, Sax, because I just, I just want to really give you a chance to say it again. You've always said, and it's so true, the solution to free speech and to protect it, is more speech. And I just want to say to Daniel Ek and the team at Spotify, you guys must have been in a really difficult spot, but the decision to take that $100 million to increase the funnel for other voices and historically underrepresented voices is so good, and I hope you guys get to the other side of it. But I thought it was a really, really, really good decision.

David Sacks 25:50 Yeah. I mean, so on Ek and, and the Spotify decision, let me say one thing to that. So I applaud them for not canceling Rogan. They must have been under enormous pressure to do so, including from their own, you know, employees. Um, the only thing I didn't like in Ek's statement was when he talked about the user safety and how they need to do a better job of, of user safety. That's a concept that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, Rogan is not sneaking into people's living rooms and turning his show on and pressing play. If people don't like it, I'm talking about users, if users don't like the content, they don't have to listen.

Jason Calacanis 26:25 You don't have to click play. You can-

David Sacks 26:26 He's not threatening anyone's safety.

Jason Calacanis 26:26 You can literally turn the channel. Yeah, that's ... it's ridiculous.

David Sacks 26:28 That we so bought into this idea of psychological safety, that being confronted with any view you don't like is a threat to your safety, that is actually a threat to free speech because it's giving the most hysterical people in our culture, the ones who are most prone to being offended, a veto over any idea that, and speech they don't like.

Jason Calacanis 26:46 Yeah. If you're uncomfortable or you're unsafe, y- you could remove yourself from that situation if it's a piece of media. You don't need to read every book, you don't need to see every Quentin Tarantino film, you don't need to listen to Joe Rogan or whatever else that you find offensive to you personally.

David Sacks 26:59 I just don't think we should be feeding that idea that, that psychological safety-

Jason Calacanis 27:02 Yeah.

David Sacks 27:02 ... is a legitimate idea.

Jason Calacanis 27:04 We talked about this before with like, you know, people at work if they say they feel unsafe, that's instantly like an HR, like, "Oh my God, you feel unsafe?"

David Sacks 27:12 Get a red alert, HR comes running over because-

Jason Calacanis 27:14 Just red alert. Now everybody is suspended.

David Sacks 27:14 ... they have a legal requirement to, if someone's-

Jason Calacanis 27:16 Yes.

David Sacks 27:16 ... creating a safety issue in the workplace, they have a legal requirement to remove that problem. That's why this language got started is it triggers the machinery of HR-

Jason Calacanis 27:25 Of course.

David Sacks 27:25 ... to remove people w- who are d- doing nothing wrong but then expressing a view you don't like.

Jason Calacanis 27:28 And what if I told you as an employee, like, "Sax, hey, listen, your work product is not good enough." You're like, "I feel unsafe" (laughs) .

David Sacks 27:34 Right.

Jason Calacanis 27:35 Okay.

David Sacks 27:35 Anyway, let's go to the truckers because I think we're beating this to death.

Jason Calacanis 27:37 I just want to have one final comment on Spotify. I think Da- and I appreciate what Daniel did with $100 million, that's great. And I think it's great that he's supporting free speech and, and he's holding his ground there. I know that's not easy. However, I think he's intellectually dishonest saying they're not the publisher of Joe Rogan. I have a three-part test to see if you're a publisher. Do you pay for the content? Do you promote it? Do you produce it? If you do two or more of those, you're de facto a publisher in my mind. They pay a lot of money for Joe Rogan. They promote the heck out of him. And while they don't produce it in advance by picking the guests, they do have a production-like veto, uh, on what content they put out there. And so if Netflix has to own the people they pay, uh, even if they don't produce it and they promote, then Spotify does need to have the same standard. And Disney and Netflix all are producers of content, nobody would argue that, and I believe Spotify is the producer Daniel's not being honest enough about.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:34 Final thought on this.

Jason Calacanis 28:35 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:36 Let me just defend Spotify for a second.

Jason Calacanis 28:37 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:38 You guys have been through this. I've, I've been through this many times at several of my companies, but when you are in the middle of a firestorm, it's very rare that you can put out these, you know, um, press releases where the pride of authorship is one person. And in many ways, you have to write these PR releases with all of these guardrails that, that think about all of these future issues that may prop up over time. And so I understand that you guys had some issues with some of the words. I would just say, again, look at the action, and the action is he didn't deplatform someone and then he doubled down on free speech and he actually pointed $100 million fire hose at people who can now tell their own stories on a platform that is the most important audio platform in the world. So I would say, you know, you know, that's kind of like same thing when I said, you know, I didn't particularly like sometimes, you know, Brian's essay, I could have written it better, but at the end of the day, what I saw through it, and I admitted this later, the substance of what Bryan Armstrong did was incredibly profound, one of the most important things that actually happened in the last few years in Silicon Valley culture. And I would just say that I think that Daniel did something really powerful here, and I think that both Spotify and Coinbase deserve, and the employees and the leaders there deserve a round of applause. I think it was a very, very hard decision and I think they stuck to their guns. Irrespective of what you believe, they stuck to their guns.

Jason Calacanis 30:03 Canadian

Jason Calacanis 30:04 truckers, uh, are protesting, as many of you know, uh, vaccine mandates. Just breaking today, Ontario's, uh, premier has declared a state of emergency...... for the entire province and, uh, Ottawa Police have braced for thousands of protestors to descend for the third consecutive weekend. USA Today also reported the convoy could disrupt the Super Bowl, Biden's State of the Union, et cetera. The protest has been self-titled The Freedom Convoy and has been underway since January 29th, 29th. It appears it, uh, has spanned several thousand vehicles across the country and the truckers are blocking key roadways and bridges, including the Ambassador Bridge. Uh, they're seeking an end to Cana- Canada's, uh, vaccine mandates, and it feels like this is now morphing into something a little bit wider than just vaccine mandates. Uh, maybe it's becoming a Occupy Wall Street type of, uh, protest open to many people with many different, uh, things that they have, uh, grievances about. A reporter from, um, Bari Weiss's Common Sense newsletter/media operation, uh, wrote what the truckers want.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:18 Jason, you're, you, you just nailed it. Um, I do think that this is actually Occupy Wall Street.

Jason Calacanis 31:22 2.0, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:23 Look, n- it, it, uh, it turned out, just to get at some roots and facts, so it's not just truckers. This is a broad-based coalition of people across every single race and gender and age group in Canada that's participating in this thing. In fact, the Bari Weiss article, you know, she profiled men, women of all ages, Sikhs, you know, whites, I mean, everybody, Blacks. There was... So there's a, there's a coalition of people. Second is this really isn't about vaccination rates because it turns out truckers are 90% vaccinated. They're vaccinated at a higher percentage than the actual broad-based population of Canada, which is about 78%. I think the, the point of this, and again, I care about this so much as a Canadian, but I, I just want to read a quote from Justin Trudeau because I think it encapsulates what this is really about. The quote is, "The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians." And I think it's that phrase unacceptable views that really points to what the real issue here is, which is that there are a lot of people who now say, "It's been two years, enough with mask mandates, enough with all of this, you know, almost police state that's developed, all of the emergency used power that politicians have taken, let's reclaim our democracy and let's have, you know, freedom again." And under the political viewpoint of the ruling Liberal Party, which by the way is now going into revolt as well, a bunch of Liberal MP's have just completely flipped because of this statement. It summarizes what Trudeau is saying, which is, "What you believe is unacceptable to me and so now I will quash you. I will-"

Jason Calacanis 33:12 Or that Canada has one viewpoint. Uh, Freeburg?

David Friedberg 33:15 Did any of you guys listen to the New York Times daily podcast that our friend sent out the link to this morning?

Jason Calacanis 33:20 Yes.

David Friedberg 33:20 You know, to me, these are the same story. It was, uh, actually, uh, um, a-an interview, uh, with a reporter, uh, who highlighted some work that she had done and identified that Phil Murphy, the, uh, the Democratic, uh, Governor of New Jersey had done some, uh, uh, some, some polling and some, some focus group discussions, uh, with some of his constituents. And the overriding tone was one of emotion, one of feeling left out of the life that they believed they should've been living over the past two years. And ultimately, I think the tone speaks very clearly to what the truckers are saying, which is everyone feels more than ever incredible overreach into their personal lives by the government. Um, and by different governments, whether it's local or federal here in the US or by this Canadian government or, you know, go to Australia or the UK and the sentiment seems to be similar everywhere. I don't think that any time since World War II have we seen the government create such restrictions and such mandates in, in democratic republics, uh, like the United States, um, that we just saw over the past two years. And I think the fact that it's continuing when folks are now seeing, you know, on the ground every day, uh, you know, the, the mildness of Omicron or, like, you know, the big, the challenges that their kids are facing in school. And you kind of put these things together and you say to yourself, "Why is my government restricting my life and causing the challenge that I'm being forced to face? For what?" And I think that's a tone that everyone feels everywhere in the West today. I, I think in the East it's a little bit different, right? Um, uh, because of the, uh, the mindset there, but I think here it's very-

Jason Calacanis 34:56 Collectivism, yeah.

David Friedberg 34:57 Collectivism. And I think here, we're, we pride individual liberty and freedom as kind of the foundation of these democracies, uh, to have the government tell us what we have to wear, shots we have to put in our arms, where we can go and when, how we can behave in ways that were never legislated, in ways that-

Jason Calacanis 35:15 Yeah.

David Friedberg 35:15 ... were never kind of debated and discussed publicly, uh, just feels overreaching at this point. I think everyone's hit their breaking point. And this is another one of these examples, this trucking thing is another one of these examples of people manifesting their breaking point.

Jason Calacanis 35:27 And Sax, to the point we've been discussing over and over again, things have changed radically since the beginning of the pandemic. You believed in mask mandates early because, hey, no downside, we talked about that, and we didn't want hospitals to be overrun, which is reasonable, right? You wanted to have oxygen, we were all, you know, trying to make plans for, "Hey, how bad is this gonna be?" But we're sitting here two years later and it's pretty clear Omicron, which I had, uh, thank you Sax, um, is, is a nothing burger-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:52 Yeah. Thank you, Sax.

Jason Calacanis 35:52 ... as we said here. Thanks, Sax.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:54 Thanks a lot, Sax.

David Friedberg 35:55 Saxicron.

Jason Calacanis 35:56 I helped you. I helped you.

35:56 Saxicron-

David Friedberg 35:57 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 35:57 ... made me a superhero.

David Friedberg 35:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 35:58 Thank you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:59 All I've ever gotten is sick when I've been around you.

Jason Calacanis 36:01 Yeah, I went to Sax's party-

David Friedberg 36:02 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 36:02 Boo.

36:02 ... and all I got was an $8,000 gift bag and Omicron.... uh, the gift bag's pretty grand at Sachs's parties, I would say.

David Sacks 36:07 No, I think, I think getting Omicron helped you because it enabled you to see that this, for you, was largely a nothing burger.

Jason Calacanis 36:14 Yes.

David Sacks 36:14 And so you could come out of your house and start acting normal. I think there's a lot of people all over the country who are like that. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 36:17 You're saying that? You haven't left your house for two years.

David Friedberg 36:20 Do you remember the photos of Sachs at the beginning of COVID-

Jason Calacanis 36:23 Yeah.

David Friedberg 36:23 ... when he was wearing the triple mask and the goggles-

Jason Calacanis 36:25 Yeah, he was scared to death.

David Friedberg 36:26 ... and the... You gotta put that photo... He ran to Mexico to build a fort. You gotta put that photo up. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 36:29 He colonel Kurz did.

David Sacks 36:30 Yeah. Well, look, I supported mask ma- mandates at the beginning of the pandemic when Fauci was telling us masks didn't work. Let's, let's not forget that.

David Friedberg 36:37 (laughs)

David Sacks 36:37 Um, you know, I was supporting it when the health officials told us they didn't work. Why? 'Cause it was the only thing we had. We didn't have vaccines.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:43 No, David, David, David, come on. He was, he was doing us a favor by lying to us. By his own admission, he said-

David Sacks 36:48 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:48 ... "I lied to you so that we could preserve these masks for frontline workers." Well, thank you, thank you, Anthony Fauci.

David Sacks 36:54 One of many, one of many l- noble lies that he's been telling.

Jason Calacanis 36:58 (laughs) Here we go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:59 He's a, he's a noble liar. He's a noble liar.

David Sacks 37:00 Right. By, by May of 2020, I would, I was saying-

David Friedberg 37:03 He's my, my biggest political loser pick from 2020. Go on.

Jason Calacanis 37:06 Take it easy on your picks.

David Friedberg 37:08 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 37:08 I know you wanna do your victory lap.

David Friedberg 37:09 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 37:09 It's only February.

David Friedberg 37:10 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 37:10 Give us till, like, June for the check-in. Okay, Colonel Kurtz, continue.

David Sacks 37:14 Masks were the main alternative to lockdowns. That's the way I saw it in the summer of 2020. And I was saying, "End these crazy lockdowns, just do masks. And then once we have the vaccine, end all COVID restrictions." That was a year ago. And now we still have these restrictions a year later, and that is what the truckers are rebelling against. Just like you said, these are ordinary people who are sick and tired of having to show their papers and have to deal with these mandates. Um, and, um, and, and for that, they've been, like, absolutely demonized. I mean, Trudeau comes out and says that they're basically white supremacists and racists and homophobic, every epithet he can throw at them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:50 Sorry, to your point, he used every... He did use every -ism. He really did try to cancel them at first, and this is what's really painted him in a corner. He went on national TV and he said, "These people are racists and misogynists." That's ex- that's specifically what he said. And it actually turned out that the overwhelming majority of them were not. They were just normal, ordinary, law-abiding Canadians who were just fed up with the overreach.

David Sacks 38:12 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:12 And then, then what happened was the polling said you should bring these convoy leaders in, sit them down, and talk to them. And then the p- the political calculus, though, was impossible for him because he had already called them racists and misogynists, so then how could he bring them in?

David Sacks 38:27 Right, exactly. Like, yeah, how do you negotiate with Nazis, basically?

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:30 So then what he did was he ran out of Ottawa. So instead of staying in Ottawa, now he's under... Uh, he's in a secure location for his safety.

Jason Calacanis 38:37 Oh my God. Oh, he feels unsafe. (laughs) So trigger warning. But in fairness, uh, when you bring 8,000 people together and you get a wide enough group of people, there was SWAT stickers and white s- confederate flags that were flown. So it might have been two of 8,000, but that did happen, which came from the cover-

David Sacks 38:55 Within any protest movement-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:55 Which I just said, yes. Especially an open one.

David Sacks 38:57 ... within any protest movement, there's always gonna be a handful of people who go too far and are too extreme, but they did not represent the vast, vast majority of the people who turned out-

Jason Calacanis 39:07 I, I would agree with that.

David Sacks 39:07 ... which are ordinary citizens.

Jason Calacanis 39:08 Yeah.

David Sacks 39:08 And Trudeau seized on a handful of isolated examples to try and demonize these guys, and I think it's blowing up in his face. The fact of the matter is, the truckers did not start this fight. It's the zealotry of our elites, of our professional class that started this fight. They will not give up on these mandates. That's the fundamental problem.

Jason Calacanis 39:28 Well, and while they go to the Super Bowl with no mask on.

David Sacks 39:30 I think what you're seeing here with this trucker thing, I think it's gonna have huge ripple effects because it's showing the schism in the Democratic Party between the professional elites and the working class. Here you have the working class. Remember, these were the essential workers. These are the people bringing us our food. Most of them have already had COVID over the last couple of years. They couldn't sit behind a computer and do their job in their pajamas on Zoom all day. Okay? So these guys know the reality of COVID, just like you learned the reality, Jason, when you actually got it. And yet we've got this neurotic class of professionals within the Democratic Party who don't want... Who are these COVID dead-enders who don't wanna give this stuff up. And that's the fundamental divide. And I think Biden's gonna have to choose which side are you on. Are you on the side of the working class or the professional class? Trudeau has chosen his side. He is the effete elite face of these COVID dead-enders, and, um, and Biden's gonna have to choose who he supports.

Jason Calacanis 40:25 And then those are dwindling. You have governors now who are, uh, Democratic governors in many states who are saying, "Listen, uh, Omicron is obviously different. And look at the charts, look at the data. We don't need masks."

David Sacks 40:37 We have to talk about this New York Times story on how-

Jason Calacanis 40:40 Yeah.

David Sacks 40:40 ... New Jersey and several other of these blue s- states dropped the mask mandates.

Jason Calacanis 40:43 Yeah.

David Sacks 40:43 It was absolutely extraordinary.

Jason Calacanis 40:45 It's not... I mean, it's not extraordinary. The, the risk assessment is different, David.

David Sacks 40:48 What was extraordinary about it is that-

Jason Calacanis 40:50 I mean, I think it's kind of obvious more than e- extraordinary. I- if Omicron is less deadly, it's an upper respiratory, doesn't kill people who are vaccinated, and most people are vaccinated, pretty obviously it's time to pivot and open everything up. It sounds like an obvious decision.

David Sacks 41:03 Biden really missed his moment here. So I think, you know, like Friedberg said, it was Phil Murphy. He's the Democratic governor of New Jersey. He was supposed to have an easy reelect, win by 20 to 30 points. He narrowly squeaks by, by two to three points. Okay? So then he conducts the focus groups to find out, what did we miss? Why were we so off on this thing? And they find out that people are sick and tired of these mandates. He goes to the White House, okay, and shows these findings and says, "Guys, we have to get off this losing position on COVID." And the White House sits on its hands and does absolutely nothing. So Murphy is like, "We can't wait anymore." So he unilaterally goes, without White House support... This is all in the New York Times article. This is not, like, some right-wing publication saying this. Okay? So he unilaterally says, "Okay, we're getting rid of the mask mandate." Okay? And then five other states do the same thing 'cause they realize we can't wait anymore. And Biden is just nowhere to be found, and Psaki is saying, "Well, we're deferring to the CDC." They're deferring to, you know, Rachel Walensky at the CDC, and Randi Weingarten at the teachers unions, and these health officials like Barbara Ferrer in LA County, all of whom are saying, "We cannot lift these mandates yet." They don't want... So they are completely on the wrong side of this. And then Biden really steps in it.... by saying to Trudeau in Canada, "Listen, you guys got to clear this bridge. Do whatever you need to do to clear this bridge," basically implying that the civil disobedience needs to be met by force. And then you've got Harvard professors and CNN analysts saying, "Slash their tires, take away their trucking licenses, starve them out." You know? So this has been the response and the re- response to that is now there's a trucker convoy getting started in the US and they're gonna march on Washington. They're gonna drive to Washington.

Jason Calacanis 42:42 Great.

David Sacks 42:42 And between now and then, Biden better figure out what side he's gonna be on, uh, because if he doesn't handle this right, I think it's gonna be the end of his presidency.

Jason Calacanis 42:50 Peaceful civil disobedience is fine as long as they're not blocking ambulances, getting people to and from hospitals, that's fine, especially the unvaccinated-

David Sacks 42:57 Yes, but, but Joe Biden-

Jason Calacanis 42:57 ... on respirators. (laughs)

David Sacks 42:58 Is this Scranton Joe, the, the, the guy who said he would take us back to normalcy, the, the representative of the working class, is that who the president of United States is or is he in the Trudeau camp, the, you know, the, the Fauci and the Walensky and the Barbara Ferrers?

Jason Calacanis 43:14 Or is he out of it and easily influenced?

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:15 I think you're asking a, you're asking a rhetorical question. I think that the, the polling data makes the answer pretty clear, which is that the Democratic Party is lurching towards establishment insiders and working normal ordinary people have, in larger and larger numbers, started gravitating towards t- the Republican Party. Minorities, in far larger numbers than we ever expected, have started lurching towards the Republican Party. And so the answer is sort of in the polling data and what, what, um, the actual facts on the ground have been. You know, I mean, we, we forget because we were all so ready to, to, to cast away our Trump derangement syndome- syndrome, but he did get, I think, what was it, nine million more people to vote for him in this past election?

David Sacks 44:06 The, the, yeah, the working class, whether they're... it's the white working class or the non-white working class are moving in huge numbers. I think-

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:13 Huge numbers.

David Sacks 44:13 I think, I think the margin of non-white working class who moved to the Republicans last election was 18 points. Ei- they got 18 points more share than eight years ago. So the working class, regardless of their race, is moving towards the Republicans while the Democrats are becoming this more elite, professional class party, this woke elite party. And, you know, I think Biden sort of is caught in the middle of this, and I think he's running out of time to try and re-establish that he's gonna have a centrist presidency that does not completely kowtow and defer to the left of his party, to the sort of woke elite thinking. You know, you, you see Democratic political scientists like Roy Teixeira writing about this, like, every week saying, "This is your last chance. This is your moment to save your presidency." And I don't know if he's

David Sacks 45:00 listening.

Jason Calacanis 45:00 Okay, Friedberg, we made some great progress in science this week in nuclear fusion. Do you wanna tee this up for us?

David Friedberg 45:08 I'm happy to. So let me just give a little background for maybe a minute on, on fusion. So, you know, the, um, the way energy is made in the sun and in all stars is through this process of nuclear fusion where hydrogen, uh, nuclei, the, the protons inside of hydrogen atoms shoot around at such a high energy and they're so dense because of the amount of hydrogen, it'll cause this gravity to pull them all together, they get really dense. They start slamming into each other. When they slam into each other, they fuse into helium and ultimately into heavier elements and release energy in the process, and that is what fusion is. So, you know, we talk about nuclear energy on Earth. All nuclear energy that we generated on Earth, uh, as a species to date has been through fission where we take much heavier elements like plutonium and uranium and bre- they break apart by squeezing them together and they release energy, but this creates radioactive material, it's dangerous, it's very, very expensive and so on. So the- there's always been a question since roughly the 1950s on whether or not we could cr- recreate the conditions of the sun or stars on planet Earth by creating a plasma, by creating the same sort of plasma that exists inside of stars, very hot, very fast, very dense hydrogen that can slam into itself and slam into atoms and fuse into helium and release energy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:22 Does that same plasma exist on Uranus?

David Friedberg 46:25 Uh-huh.

Jason Calacanis 46:26 (laughs)

David Friedberg 46:27 (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

David Sacks 46:28 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 46:28 God, you, you're gonna give him a wedgie. Let science boy finish. Come on.

David Friedberg 46:31 Oh, sorry. Back to you.

David Sacks 46:34 Never gets old.

Jason Calacanis 46:35 Was it 69 megajoules or 420 megajoules? Go ahead, sorry.

David Friedberg 46:38 Yeah. So plasma fusion's always been this kind of Holy Grail of energy because if you can actually generate plasma fusion, the amount of energy it takes to create the plasma is less than the energy that comes out of the plasma, so it's, it's effectively inf- inf-

Jason Calacanis 46:49 Net positive.

David Friedberg 46:50 ... infinite, free, cheap plasma. And so the, the system that people have been building for the last 25, 30 years is these, uh, these donut shaped systems called tokamaks. They're, they're, they, they're like a, a circle or like a donut and they spin the plasma around inside and so it takes a lot of energy and magnets and so on to try and make this work. You know, there's a company we talked about a few months ago called Commonwealth Fusion Systems which uses a new superconducting material to control that plasma and use... instead of using expensive magnets, and they just raised $1.8 billion. And, uh, you know, more recently, uh, the Joint, um, European Torus, which is managed by the, uh, the Atomic Energy Authority in the United Kingdom, uh, just this week demonstrated, um, energy output, uh, from their tokamak plasma fusion system where they generated, you know, 59 megawatts of, of energy in five seconds, uh, which is, um, a record. Uh, the prior record was set in 1997 by that same agency. They generated 16 megawatts, uh, of power output. So it, it was a great breakthrough. And, you know, to make this all possible has required, uh, technical breakthroughs in electronics, uh, technical breakthroughs in sensors, in computing, in hardware, in material science, in superconductors. And so all of this is starting to coalesce that plasma fusion might actually become a reality. And the ITER system, which is the biggest construction project in Europe, 35 nations have contributed a total of roughly $50 to $60 billion to make this system.... um, is, uh, is gonna go online around 2027. They've been building it for 20 years. It's gonna be a 500 megawatt demonstration system and if it works, then it opens up the door that in the future we may actually be able to turn plasma fusion into an energy source for all of humanity. It basically would use water. Plasma fusion is made from taking hydrogen, which you would get from water, spinning it around, heating it up, getting it to be really, really dense, and ultimately deriving power out of it. The implications are extraordinary, right? So over the next few decades, it is appearing more likely that we will have plasma fusion systems working on Earth. And as that happens, energy becomes free and it becomes unlimited. And with unlimited free energy, we can terraform Earth, right? We can take, uh, uh, ocean water, desal it, turn it into fresh water. We can pump that into deserts, turn them into rainforests. Um, you know, the total annual production of energy on Earth today is about 170 terawatt hours. That amount of energy could be generated from just a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot cube of water. Um, that's the amount of energy, the amount of material that would be turned into photons that would drive all of the electricity we need on Earth. So it's an incredible technology, an incredible breakthrough. We're starting to see this stuff happen. One area that I wanted to kinda just highlight which no one talks about, but which I think is extraordinarily, um, important about 100 years from now let's say. As these plasma fusion systems work, it's certainly gonna be, um, true that we'll have abundant free energy during the back half of this century and that'll change everything. We'll decarbonize the atmosphere, we'll terraform the planet, we can make whatever we want, we can build things, et cetera. But the same system of plasma fusion theoretically could be used to fuse heavier elements than just helium. So fast-forward 100 or 200 years, if we can actually make plasma fusion systems work, we could also... And to, to make helium, to make energy, we could also use them to make heavier elements like the rare earth metals that we talk about being so important here on Earth to make, um, batteries. Or phosphorous, uh, which, you know, we're gonna run out of on Planet Earth in about 100 years, which is a critical component of agriculture and feeding ourselves. So, you know, over the next, call it, 100 years, plasma fusion systems, I think back half of this century come online, provide us with abundant free energy. And then in the 22nd century, I think this idea of nucleosynthesis, the idea that we can actually make the rare earth or the heavier elements that are limited natural resources here on Earth, where we could turn water into gold, or water into lithium, or water into molybdenum, or, you know, into beryllium or whatever, um, starts to become a reality. Um, and so this, to me, like, I, I feel like we're on the eve of plasma fusion being a reality, you know, based on some of the results we're seeing. And it's, it's one after the other. ITER is gonna come online. You know, Commonwealth Fusion had their, their materials breakthrough and on and on and on. So this seems to be building up. And so the 2030s-

Jason Calacanis 51:04 And it's gonna hit a tipping point, yeah.

David Friedberg 51:06 That's right. I think the 2030s and the 2040s are where this becomes real. And all these problems and concerns we have about climate change and carbon in the atmosphere, all of this stuff can be reversed with infinite energy.

Jason Calacanis 51:18 And so, com-

David Friedberg 51:19 So I'm optimistic and I'm, I'm, I'm excited about a lot of what we're seeing.

Jason Calacanis 51:22 Let me ask you one question. Obviously when people start hearing about nuclear reactors and fission, and then they start learning about fusion, they immediately have the Chernobyls of the world and Fukushimas come to mind, and nuclear bombs. In this case, when this reaction occurs, my understanding, I've interviewed a couple people working on these reactors, is that the reaction just fizzles out. It just stops. And then the-

David Friedberg 51:45 It's not radioactive. So these-

Jason Calacanis 51:46 Right.

David Friedberg 51:47 ... thes- these are not radioactive materials that naturally decay into radioactive, um, ions or, or particles that can, uh, damage the body or damage... Uh, the- these are literally just hydrogen atoms that are spun around so hot and smashed into each other. So if the machine breaks, everything just turns off. That's it.

Jason Calacanis 52:03 And the output, even when it's working, my understanding is, some natural, uh, like just air and water. (laughs) So-

David Friedberg 52:11 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 52:11 ... there's no output. There's no-

David Friedberg 52:12 There's nothing radioactive.

Jason Calacanis 52:13 Am I correct? There's-

David Friedberg 52:13 There's no environmental-

Jason Calacanis 52:14 There's nothing to deal with.

David Friedberg 52:15 And so, so let, let me fast-forward 200 years. So now assume these systems work. As you guys know, all technology over time gets better, faster, cheaper, smaller. So in 200 years, we could find that we have plasma fusion reactions in every pocket, in every computer, in every phone. Imagine a world where we no longer need batteries, where we no longer need transmission lines, and where a system can literally pull hydrogen out of the air, generate electricity on the fly. And it sounds crazy, but people thought, people would've never thought that the batteries that we put inside of phones would've existed when the first flow cell battery cell was made, you know, whatever, you know, during the early days of, of, uh, uh, of chemistry, electrical chemistry. So, you know, the idea that we've been able to shrink batteries as we have, um, the, the idea that we've been able to make generators like we have today, these were concepts that would've been so foreign. So I do think that in 200 years, if plasma fusion systems work, there's nothing about the laws of physics that says they're limited in scale to only being large. They theoretically could be reduced down to, there's no limit to the size they could drop down to. And so there could be a world 200 years from now where plasma fusion reactors exist in every component that needs electricity. Um, and so ultimately you could see putting these, these systems on, um, spaceships and using them to convert elements from one form to another. And we could live for, you know, 100,000 years on a spaceship and just recycle the elements on that spaceship to produce all our food and our air and everything, and yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:40 For sure we could get to Uranus with that.

Jason Calacanis 53:42 Absolutely.

David Sacks 53:42 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 53:42 And back.

David Friedberg 53:43 The summary.

Jason Calacanis 53:44 And back, you could.

David Friedberg 53:45 And back.

Jason Calacanis 53:45 You could circle his anus.

David Friedberg 53:47 So that was my diatribe on plasma fusion. I'm super excited about some of the progress-

Jason Calacanis 53:50 All right.

David Friedberg 53:50 ... we're seeing.

Jason Calacanis 53:51 So right now, Sax is wondering how do we wet our beaks. Tell us where to place the bet.

David Friedberg 53:54 It's, there's nowhere yet. This is, yeah.

David Sacks 53:56 I mean, honestly, I don't place bets on things that take 100,000 years.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:59 (laughs) It's only 100 years, Sax.

David Sacks 54:02 Oh, 100 years, sorry.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:03 100,000 years.

David Sacks 54:03 I invest in things that might materialize in four years, sorry.

Jason Calacanis 54:06 100 weeks, he needs to upgrade his plane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:07 Sax's bills are due next month. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 54:09 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:09 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 54:10 Margin call, Sax? Oh, uh-oh.

David Sacks 54:12 I got bills to pay.

Jason Calacanis 54:13 I got bill... (laughs) Dad,

Jason Calacanis 54:15 he's got bills.

David Friedberg 54:16 By the way, a big part of, um, the, you know, just speaking markets for a second, I mentioned to you guys at the end of last year that I made a bet on energy stocks.And the reason I made a bet on energy stocks is because some of the breakthroughs that we're seeing in decarbonization and renewable energy has driven a reduction in capital improvements across energy infrastructure, because people are so optimistic about what's over the horizon and they're so pessimistic about carbon-intensive energy systems, that we actually have underinvested over the past few years in energy infrastructure that it's turning out today is critically needed. So, while this is a great long-term kind of optimistic world scenario and it's gonna decarbonize energy production and energy systems, in the near term, we're actually struggling a bit to meet our energy demands. And there's a lot of leverage that energy producers have over those that are the consumers, as we are seeing currently with the Russia-Ukraine-Europe crisis and so on. And so part of the reason for the climb in energy stocks over the last couple of weeks has been largely driven by the fact that we're realizing that this underinvestment in CapEx has created a decline in productivity of these assets relative to the demand. And so suddenly everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, these things are gonna be able to charge more, commodity prices are going up," and so on. So, you know, it's very hard to think about playing an investment cycle around this stuff because in the near term there's still significant demand and we only have carbon-intensive systems to produce energy.

Jason Calacanis 55:34 Well, I was gonna ask you, Tremov, if... Does this mean on an investment thesis, you might see a massive spike in carbon-based fuel systems and these-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:42 No.

Jason Calacanis 55:42 ... sovereign wealth funds and then a dramatic drop-off?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:45 No.

Jason Calacanis 55:45 Okay. What do you predict will happen?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:47 The... Nobody will support anybody investing in pulling more oil out of the ground. They'll, they'll support trying to get more from what we have, um, but, you know, I, I don't know if y- ... I don't know if you guys saw, but, you know, um, there's no support for this. Whether you're an investor and you go activist on some of these oil companies, you know, whether you're... I think the- ... Biden had a big setback because, you know, he had cleared a whole, like, millions of acres of offshore land for, uh, some qui- some kind of energy extraction that was then just reversed by the courts. No, n- nobody has support for this though, so...

David Friedberg 56:26 But that's a g- It's... But what you're saying is exactly right and it's exactly the reason oil prices are climbing. I just sent you guys a link to, to what's going on today.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:33 They're... But they're climbing for the wrong reasons. So look, let, let, let's just be realistic here. We, you know, we have a cartel, it's called OPEC, you know, uh, and what they do is they decide output. And we have some bal- checks and balances to OPEC, namely Russia and a few other actors who will try to then regulate, um, supply and demand so that there's mutually assured destruction. The net result of all of that right now is that we do have some constrained supply for the amount that we need to gets... to get back to the level of production we had pre-pandemic. So we are gonna have some sustained energy prices. But you saw something really important this past week. Everybody was waiting for this big CPI print, right? The Consumer Price Index print. Everybody thought it was gonna be a bad number. It was a pretty bad number, but the markets were pretty responsive to it. And, um, and then it's been pretty responsive the rest of the week, despite a whole bunch of stuff. I don't know if you guys saw, but, like, yesterday there was this crazy article where, you know, one of the Fed governors was like, "We should raise by 100 basis points by July, and, you know, we should do eight, eight raises." And, and the markets were like, "What are you talking about?" And why is that? Because now people have started to look... You know, I've, I've mentioned this before. When you go into a rate cycle, we're kind of past worrying about how many. We kind of look to the end and decide what we want to believe about the future, and one of the most interesting things is the rate of change of this inflation was actually lower month over month. And so if you think about it that way, we had a bad CPI print, but it's actually not going up as much and in fact it's starting to trail off. And a lot of economists now forecast basically this inflation peaking or already having peaked over the last few weeks. Consumer sentiment is not so good. A lot of us are now shifting our consumption away from goods to more services. We're s- we're stopping, you know, the hoarding of the toilet papers of the world, if you will, and so I'm not a big buyer of this trade, to be honest with you, Freidberg. I think that it works in the short term. I don't think it's an investment. I think at some point you're gonna have to make a decision about what your view on energy is. I don't know-

David Friedberg 58:43 No, I, I agree. I don't think this is a long-term trade.

Jason Calacanis 58:45 It's a trade, not an investment.

David Friedberg 58:46 Yeah. That's right. But I do... I do... I do think that the macro sentiment sent the market in one direction and creates this opp- It, it created a buying opportunity, which I was pretty clear about. And I do think that some of this global tension stuff we're seeing is only gonna drive it up for a while. So-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:58 I do... I do think, however, that the, the, uh, this, uh, big tech spread trade is moving from a trade to an investment actually, and that I didn't expect. And the reason is, I talked to a bunch of folks on Wall Street over this past week and they told me two things, and one of them is a segue 'cause I think we should talk about Microsoft, which is another brilliant move in the lexicon of business, but what they said was, "Facebook has become a funding short for other investments." Now, what does that mean? Everybody was crowded into big tech. We talked about this before, right? Those five stocks were broadly owned. They were effectively the index. But after that, um, after that earnings report, a lot of investors, including retail investors, had to decide where to reallocate their capital and had to decide where to invest, where the money was gonna come from to invest in these other names that were really beaten up. And what folks on Wall Street have been telling me is that, you know, Facebook has become what's called a funding short, meaning there is no bid to buy that from institutional owners. They'd rather on the margin sell it to generate the cash to then take and invest in other things. And what you saw over this past week is the bottoming out of a lot of these growth stocks that were beaten up, right? They rallied pretty significantly every day, 3, 4, 5, 6% rallies. Um, and other names in big tech have rallied really well, including Microsoft.And, um, and so I, um, I, I think that there is the potential, a small potential that that's going from a trade to an investment actually, a sustainable trend that you can bank on for, you know, several years.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:38 Investment, hold the stock for five, 10 years.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:40 The trade, that spread trade you can-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:41 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:41 ... hold for long periods then.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:42 But for the winners to be c- the winners in that, just so people get refreshed, Google's a winner in that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:47 Microsoft, Google.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:47 Microsoft, Google and then you feel Amazon, Facebook obviously, and Netflix are the losers in that trade. Still feel that way?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:56 I think that Microsoft and Google are far and away the winners, far and away the winners. And look you saw, you saw,

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:01 you saw this Microsoft thing today or sorry, this past week. So smart, you know-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:05 Yeah, so just to give, catch people up on that-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:07 Yeah, it is.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:07 ... Microsoft has made a, another savvy move to get approval for their $75 billion Activision Blizzard, uh, acquisition. They promised their video game app store would operate with open market principles. CEO of the year, uh, Satya Nadella, uh, and others traveled-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:24 Nadella.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:24 ... to Washing- uh, Nadell, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:26 Nadella.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:26 ... traveled to, Nadella, right, there's an A at the end, um, traveled to Washington this week to meet with regulators regarding the acquisition so they, I guess, are proactively going to Washington as opposed to other people who maybe are not. Quote from Microsoft President Brad Smith, "We are more focused on adopting, adapting to regulation than fighting against it." That's some really interesting kung fu right there, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:47 Look, there's a, there's a famous story about this explorer named Hernando Cortes where, uh, you know, we've all heard this analogy or this, this, this, uh, little phrase before, um, where, you know, when they were exploring, um, coming from Europe and, you know, they hit the Caribbean islands and then, you know, looking for America et cetera. The famous phrase is, "Burn the boats."

Jason Calacanis 1:02:08 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:09 Right? Can't go back. We have to find our way in.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:11 Make it work.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:12 Um, the, the way that that's been extended in business is sort of what we would call scorch the earth. And there's a competitive move that a lot of businesses, if they're smart enough, can execute, which is to effectively take a key market and take an economic view of that market where you say that we're gonna take all the economic value away from it. And I think this is the first step towards a really interesting play that Microsoft could pull, which is essentially to scorch the earth of app stores.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:41 Which is Google's and Apple's really big money printer.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:45 To make a completely open permissible platform with very little to no take rate, and in a market as big as video games, I think what it does is it creates pressure on all these other mega platforms to essentially copy them. And I think Friedberg mentioned this before, Google has actually been the best in doing this by finding these key markets or I think it was Sax, you know, Chrome and other things and giving them away for free. Google is in a position to make the app store effectively free and then that puts Apple on a little bit of a desert island. So Jason, back to why I think you can keep Apple in that basket of shorts, the competitive pressures are mounting by, by the moves of Microsoft that I think are easier for Google to copy-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:25 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:25 ... and very difficult for companies like Apple to copy 'cause it creates an incredible, um, disincentive.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:30 Yeah, and also as part of this open app store concept, they would let you use any payment system so if you're on an iPhone and you wanted to use Apple Pay with a Google app purchase, you could do that, and if you're on, you know, Microsoft's, you can use PayPal as an example.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:44 Sax, what do you, what do you think about inflation?

David Sacks 1:03:46 Okay, there was a really interesting chart on inflation that actually Zero Hedge tweeted and, um, I threw it up in the notes here, where they said, "Real hourly earnings are negative 1.7%. It's the tenth month in a row where US incomes aren't keeping up with inflation." So the problem here is that, you know, people's incomes have increased with inflation but not as much as the inflation rate so the net effect of it is that people are feeling worse off. When they go to the grocery store to buy groceries or whatever they need, they don't feel as rich. That's the fundamental problem here. And I think there's a lot of people out there who think that there's a free lunch, that if we printed two trillion worth of stimulus checks, this is the whole, that $2 trillion bill last year they shoveled through, I think the idea was, "We're gonna print as much money as we can before the election and it's gonna help us in the midterms." Actually, as it turns out, it boosted inflation so much that people are feeling worse off even though their wages went up slightly because on a net basis, their earnings are down. So I just think it's a good reminder that, um, you can't just like print, uh, wealth, you can't print your way to prosperity.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:57 No free lunches?

David Sacks 1:04:58 There's no free lunches.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:59 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:04:59 Or we're gonna create addiction to universal income or universal subsidy. Um, that's the alternative is people are gonna basically try and vote to make some programs that were initially meant to be temporary more permanent in order to keep up the, uh, the lifestyle that they've been, become accustomed to.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:15 Just, uh, just to build on Sax's point, uh, the University of Michigan, uh, consumer sentiment was released, I think it was today, this morning, and it shows exactly what he's saying which is that, you know, consumers' propensity and confidence in the economy has been falling off a cliff. You know the month over month change was almost, uh, it was down 8.2%. The year over year change is down almost 20%. Current economic conditions was down 20% and then index of consumer expectations down 19% so to, to Sax's point-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:47 People are scared.

David Sacks 1:05:47 Yeah, well we've been, we've been talking on the show for the last, I'd say couple of months about balancing the risk of recession versus the risk of inflation. Inflation, I think, has gotten slightly worse. Uh, the print went from, with the last print was like 7.1%, now it's 7.5% so to Chamath's point earlier, it's getting worse but the rate of how fast it's getting worse is slowing-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:07 Could be peaking.

David Sacks 1:06:08 ... but the risk of recession, I think, is increasing because what's keeping this economy going is the consumer, and if the consumer sentiment now all of a sudden is tanking and people feel poorer because of inflation, I just, you know, now the, the, the risks are starting to become more balanced.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:23 While our sentiment, as sentiment goes down, this is where governors play a critical role because if they don't open up these economies, we can't actually have a consumer-led consumption rebound of the economy because there aren't any services to buy because you can't actually be around anybody.So if the economy remains effectively closed and people are done buying, you know, tubs of margarine and toilet paper, uh, because, you know, Armageddon isn't coming as we were worried it would, what are we supposed to be doing? So this is how these things interplay. So we have to get these... Again, go- going back to where we started, we have to get this economy open and we have to just get back to some sense of normalcy, and the consumer will lead us out. But I think, Sacks, you're right. On the margin, I think the risk is towards a recession because people don't see this. Thomas Sowell, who's a well-known Stanford... He's a, I think he's a senior fellow at, at Hoover. Um, you know, he, he has this comment which is effectively, taxes are bad for the rich and the poor, but inflation is bad just for the poor. And the reason he says that is because, you know, if you're wealthy, you can transition to assets that are sort of inflation-adjusted or inflation-protected, right? You can consume assets or you can purchase assets to protect yourself. But inflation is an ex- exceptionally regressive means of the government taking compensation away from you, current compensation, and it disproportionally affects working class ordinary people. And so if you have real wages that are negative, inflation that's high, that's confiscatory, right? It, you are, you are meaningfully less well-off than you were before. And, you know, wealthy folks have a way to hedge but normal, ordinary, working-class people do not. And on the margin then, if they then do not go out and spend, the problem will be some sort of recessionary effect.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:03 I, I also think if we open up, more people might, uh, since they're so lonely and getting weird staying at home, I think they might actually want to go do jobs to socialize and do things. I'm seeing, uh, people want to get out and do, you know, trips with their teams and they're, and they're sick of staying home. Salesforce just bought a retreat center. I don't know if you saw this, south of the city, uh, of the Bay Area. And because Benioff's got a concern, I guess, that all these employees he hired over two years who've never met another Salesforce employee are getting weird and lonely and, uh, you know, could create mental health issues.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:34 I think history is gonna be very... I think, David, you're right. I think history is gonna be really judgmental of Biden if he is the last person to basically give the green light and all of these Democratic governors basically revolt and open up under- underneath, you know, uh, either silence or the complete opposite point of view. This is a really-

David Sacks 1:08:54 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:54 ... bad setup.

David Sacks 1:08:55 Well, National Journal, which again is not some right-wing publication, they're just sort of a, uh, an analyst of what's happening in Washington, said that Biden, they had an article, Biden is blowing his COVID moment. He was elected to lead us back to normalcy. All he had to do was say, "Guys, it's time for the restrictions to come off," and take credit for the fact that we were, that the whole country was ready to move on. And he's kind of missed it. And, uh, but this, this trucker convoy that's coming to Washington gives him one more chance, I think, to get on the right side of this because there's really two ways he can react. One is to treat them as, you know, domestic terrorists, you know, racists, white supremacists, insurrectionaries. Or he can, you know, embrace them and say-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:37 Yeah, constituents.

David Sacks 1:09:38 All he has to do is say, "Listen, we love you, we respect you, we hear you, we agree with you. It's time for these mandates to end. And you know what? Thank you Rachel Walensky and Anthony Fauci for your service. We understand you're just trying to keep the country safe, but thank you very much. We're ready to move on. We're getting rid of all these restrictions." His popularity would, like, bounce five points, 10 points if he did that.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:02 Yeah. I'm betting he's going to. I mean, he's, he's always represented the working man and woman of this country. That's been his thing from the beginning. I bet you he does embrace them and, uh, if you look at omicron, remember the scariness of December? "Hey, this thing is spreading 30, 40, 50 times faster. I wonder if it's gonna have the same death rate." And we didn't know. And now we know. And it's February. Two months later, we know that the curve in South Africa, same as the curve in New York and California. Up and down and then, uh, the only people who die, seemingly, are immunocompromised or unvaccinated or both. So, it feels like the perfect time.

David Sacks 1:10:33 You know who really led us back to normalcy? I mean, we really need to give credit to all the people who fought to... It's the moms who went to these school board meetings, who were denounced as domestic terrorists. They're the ones who put pressure to repeal these mask mandates on their kids. Which, by the way, aren't even fully off. In New York and California, adults don't have to wear a mask anymore but the kids do. It's the scientists, it's the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration who were demonized and called fringe and, and kooks and conspiracy theorists. They're the ones who provided the real data against lockdowns, not the NIH. It's these truckers who are basically opposing mandates. These are the people who are dragging us back to normalcy, and it's the politicians who are reacting to that when the polls change. And I think what the people want now is some real leadership. It's a politician who gets up there and leads us back to normalcy. Why can't Biden do that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:21 There's a great article in The Times and they profiled, you know, a couple of people and one of them was a mom in New York who's running for Congress against, you know, an inten- an entrenched Democrat. And she's, I mean, you know, she's just a good-hearted mom who was like, "This is enough. Enough's enough. I need to get back to normalcy. My kids need to get back in school."

Jason Calacanis 1:11:40 We still have mask mandates here in California. Kids are still wearing masks in school, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:44 It's becoming tribal warfare amongst the Democrats in California because even when, you know, the, the governor basically said, "Okay, mask mandates can go on X date," the, the county supervisors have not decided. So for example, in Santa Clara County, you know, uh, they've not said yes.

David Sacks 1:12:05 In LA County, there's a health dir- an unelected bureaucrat, a health director, named Barbara Ferrer. She calls the shots on COVID. After Newsom basically said that the masks can come off, she says, "No, they can't. Not until April." Who is this person giving us orders? She told this to the Board of Supervisors down there, and we're all just supposed to listen? Now, the reason why she has this authority is because Newsom, it's granted to her under Newsom's state of emergency. So what he should do is end that. What is the emergency? The Super Bowl is happening this weekend in the state and everyone's gonna be there maskless.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:36 I mean, I was at the Warriors game last night and-... you had people wearing the most flimsy of masks that does nothing to protect, people taking them off while they're eating and drinking, and then people walking around with signs. The security guards had signs that said, "Please put your mask on." And they were walking up to people, I kid you not, and putting this, like, little round sign, uh, in people's faces and not talking to them, just, you know... And they would stand there until you put your mask back on and, like, you're literally eating a hot dog and then you put the hot dog down, and then they come up and put the sign in your face, then you put your mask up, you take another bite of your hot dog. I mean, it was getting unnecessarily confrontational and just weird. And, and nowhere else are you seeing it and then you go to a restaurant and the employees are wearing masks and nobody else is.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:18 Nick, I hope, I hope you can find it-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:20 So weird.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:20 But there was this clip on Twitter, um, when the mask mandate was lifted in Nevada, and it was a clip of kids in, like, grade two or three and they went crazy. Okay? And the reason they were so excited was, like, they got to be normal again. And the explanation, I had never heard this more beautifully said, these children can finally see their friends' emotions on their face.

David Sacks 1:13:48 Oh my God.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:49 Can you imagine if you were four, five, six, seven years old and you cannot understand the emotions of other kids because you're covered-

David Sacks 1:13:58 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:58 ... up in a mask?

Jason Calacanis 1:13:59 And you've only-

David Sacks 1:14:00 That's a great point.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:00 ... had an experience in school-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:01 Come on, guys.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:01 Two years in school-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:02 Enough's enough.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:02 ... of kids-

David Sacks 1:14:03 My six-year-old has never attended a day of school without a mask.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:05 Enough's enough.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:06 I was about to say, right? Like that's... There's kids out there who have never had a clip clipped.

David Sacks 1:14:08 And, you know, I was at, I was at, uh, like the... I was at horses with one of my kids last weekend and there were a bunch of kids out there riding. The... It's sunny, it's outside, they're on a horse, they're all wearing masks in a voluntary optional situation. I'm just like, "How brainwashed." This generation that we're raising, I mean, they're going to be so neurotic, but they're also, like, brainwashed.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:29 To a point, yes.

David Sacks 1:14:30 I mean, it's, it's crazy.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:31 We see it in the Bay Area, like, I'll have a party with the kids or a group of kids come over and there's two or three parents who